A Pasta Dish Hiding in the Pantry

AT least once a week I scrounge for dinner without shopping, a cooking style that I suppose is counter to current trends but one that admirably displays the benefits of my dedication to pantry stocking.

Often, the cooking centers on pasta. And although I repeat favorites, I’m gradually concluding that there are no limits to appealing combinations of dry-pasta-and-whatever, many of them originally created in Southern Italy.

Video

Pasta With Sardines

Mark Bittman makes a Southern Italian dish with ingredients you can find in your pantry.

By Gabe Johnson on Publish Date March 26, 2010.
Photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times.
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This one is made with no fresh ingredients save for an onion and a little lemon — both pantry staples — and some parsley if it’s around. In fact, this is a meal made from a box, some jars and a can. The box is pasta (and maybe bread crumbs, but if you have stale bread around, so much the better), the jars are capers and oil, and the can is sardines. The sardines are not only inexpensive and meaty but also one of the few fish not (yet) on anyone’s “watch” list, so unlike most seafood they can be eaten without guilt.

Like so many pasta dishes, this one barely involves cooking. You do have to brown the bread crumbs, a task that requires attention to make sure you catch them when they’re golden-brown. But once those are done, the dish takes as long to make as the pasta takes to cook.

The sauce begins with the softening of onions in oil and finishes less than 10 minutes later with the addition of the lemon, capers and sardines. When the pasta is ready, it’s all tossed together, along with some of the pasta’s cooking water for moisture, the toasted bread crumbs and the parsley, if you have it. There are few finer ways to reap the rewards of a well-stocked cupboard.

A version of this article appears in print on March 31, 2010, on Page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Dinner in a Box, 2 Jars and a Can. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe